


Right Round

by Nevcolleil



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 17:24:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3298262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevcolleil/pseuds/Nevcolleil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barry figures most people react to near-death experiences in weird ways... they develop eating disorders or drinking problems. He should probably consider himself lucky that all he gets is an inexplicable fixation on his best friend's boyfriend (that isn't actually all that inexplicable.) Or: Barry had just gotten over <i>one</i> impossible infatuation, and then Eddie Thawne saved his life and RUINED EVERYTHING.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Right Round

He tries not to think about it. He _really_ tries. 

 

Things between him and Iris have just started to settle into a new kind of normal... and Barry doesn't want to ruin that.

 

But he closes his eyes to sleep most nights, and he feels wet pavement against his palms... blood trickling down the side of his face. He looks up, and Captain Cold is approaching, Heatwave at his side. Even in the dimly lit street, spots of pain clouding his vision, Barry can see Snart smirk in triumph. He's certain that he's about to die.

 

Then Eddie is there... throwing an arm over Barry's shoulders. A shield drops down in front of them almost a moment too late, and Eddie shouts, "Hold on!" voice raw and urgent.

 

" _Go, go, go_!" Barry remembers Eddie saying - like he was planning on staying in that street alone, with both Heatwave and Cold firing down on him, so that the Flash could make a run for it - and something in Barry's chest twists.

 

He thinks about it a lot.

 

He's just not sure why.

 

 

 

The most obvious answer is that Barry has a bad case of hero worship.

 

Which should be funny... because _he_ is the superhero in Central City. Honestly, though, Barry wouldn't be surprised - he has been known to (as Iris calls it) "go all fanboy" over people he finds impressive. Harrison. The "Vigilante" of Starling City... And, now that Barry has done his best to let go of his impossible feelings for Iris, he can admit to himself that Eddie Thawne is... marginally impressive.

 

If you're talking really wide margins.

 

Eddie is everything Barry figures a superhero _ought_ to be. He's traditionally handsome - all strong, stubbled jaw; big, buff arms and broad shoulders. He's considerate but decisive. Confident but not overbearing. He's obviously brave... So far he's helped save the lives of most of the people Barry cares about, at least a couple of times apiece.

 

Hero worship would be a nice, _clean_ explanation for Barry's fixation on how Eddie saved him.

 

Except that Joe's saved lots more lives - has saved Barry's life - and Barry has never dreamed about _him_ this way. And when Barry used to "fanboy" over Harrison, he never found himself staring at the guy - not at his face in a magazine, or on t.v., or in person that one time, the night that the particle accelerator exploded.

 

Suddenly, Barry is noticing Eddie in ways that he never noticed him before. The way the corners of his eyes crinkle just a little when he smiles really wide. How different his smiles are - the one that he gives Iris when he thinks they're alone, from the one that he gives to everyone in the squad room, from the one that Barry only sees when he's standing on the other side of a punching bag, up in the lab.

 

Barry notices what kind of coffee Iris brings Eddie when she brings them all - Eddie, Barry and Joe - coffee from Jitters in the morning. Barry notices which tune Eddie hums under his breath when he's lost in thought at his desk; the little huffs of frustration and almost-growls that replace his humming when the evidence isn't coming together in a way he'd like.

 

Barry learns more about Eddie in one week than he'd cared - before - to find out in maybe a month...

 

And he has no idea what to do with any of it.

 

 

 

Another possible explanation Barry devises for this... _whatever_ of his... is that he's not really fixating on Eddie at all. Barry did almost _die_ , right? He came a lot closer to it than he has before, anyway. And most people react to near death experiences in weird ways - Barry's spontaneous interest his best friend's boyfriend isn't even the weirdest. 

 

He could have developed an eating disorder. He could have picked up a drinking problem. He decides he should just be happy that he doesn't have either of those things. (Since Cisco and Caitlyn would have to engineer any "fix" Barry might crave, either addiction would have been incredibly inconvenient - not to mention _embarrassing_.)

 

Unfortunately, however, telling himself that it's all in his head - that he just has to get over this latest case of the "yips" - doesn't help Barry as much as he'd like. It doesn't stop the dreams. Barry is nearly torn apart _from the inside_ by a metahuman with an ax to grind with Harrison, and Barry doesn't start daydreaming about that instead.

 

One day, Eddie is huffing and grunting through a workout on the bag, and suddenly Barry thinks about the way Eddie had panted that night, when the Flash deposited him a safe distance away from the street. Barry is so startled by the flare of heat that ignites in his belly that he gasps and lets go of the bag. Eddie's next punch propels it right into Barry's face.

 

"Oh my god! Allen, are you alright?"

 

"Yesh! Yesh, just _aughh_ -" Barry isn't alright, actually. Barry's nose is broken in two places - and he has to break it himself twice more by the end of the day, so that his quick healing doesn't catch anyone's attention.

 

The talking-to Caitlyn gives him when she has to reset his nose is one for the books.

 

"How the _hell_ did this even happen to you?" she fusses. "You didn't work any cases today - ours or the CCPD's."

 

"I'b nob afwaid ta die," Barry says almost mournfully, not that that will make any sense to Caitlyn.

 

But then, Caitlyn probably thinks Barry rarely makes sense. She takes his cryptic, mottled words in stride. "Clearly!" she scolds. "Do something like this to yourself again and I'll kill you!"

 

She doesn't even look sorry about it when she cracks his nose back into place and Barry screams.

 

It doesn't seem like the right time to ask her what _she_ would do if she suddenly realized she was bicurious - and not just because of a near-death experience.

 

So that leaves Barry to keep figuring out this shit on his own.

 

 

 

Luckily, it's not like puzzling out a problem with mostly his own powers of deduction to rely upon is something that Barry's unused to. He's a forensic scientist, after all. Like a detective, except with a mass spectrometer instead of a sidearm. So once he's accepted that, yes, he _does_ have a problem - and, no, it doesn't look like this problem is just going to resolve itself - Barry has a process he can follow.

 

And step one of that process is to examine the "scene of the crime."

 

For Barry, in this case, that means the moment that the Flash and 'Detective Thawne' started to work together. 

 

Recreating that circumstance is all that Barry is after when he grabs Eddie out of the precinct parking lot one night, after Joe has already gone home and while Iris is working late at Jitters. In what, to Eddie, must seem like the blink of an eye, Barry rushes him to the roof of the stationhouse. He leaves Eddie, rocking slightly on his heels, far enough away from the room's ledge for safety, and retreats to it himself. 

 

Eddie makes the same, breathy gasps he had the night Barry propelled him across the street, and with a sinking sense of realization, Barry confirms what he had already begun to suspect. Fear had _not_ been the cause of the adrenaline rush that had flashed through Barry in that moment that he can't forget. Not even by half. 

 

"I wanted to thank you again, Detective Thawne, for helping me defeat Captain Cold and Heatwave," Barry says in his Flash voice, before Eddie can misunderstand the situation. Not that he had enjoyed having Eddie hate him before - but now that Barry knows why he's been obsessing over Eddie (yes... he can say it; if only in his head) Barry especially doesn't want to scare Eddie again, and prompt him to reassemble his old task force.

 

Eddie does look a little scared - for a moment - his eyes wide and his shoulders tense. Then Barry watches him visibly - and purposefully - relax.

 

"I- I just laid down the cover," Eddie says, not knowing he's essentially given the Flash this same modest response once before. "You defeated them. I'm sorry we couldn't hang onto them for you."

 

There is real shame in Eddie's eyes as he apologises, which presents a problem Barry probably should have anticipated. Barry's listened to Eddie talk about Cold's and Heatwave's escape from prisoner transport; he's watched him work out his frustration on the bag. But here, Barry can't reach out and comfort Eddie the way he could in the lab or the bar, with a boxing-gloved fistbump or a hand on Eddie's shoulder.

 

He races across the rooftop and back to burn off _his_ frustration at how much heavier his secrets weigh now that he and Eddie are something like friends. (And he carefully doesn't react to the wide-eyed look Eddie gives him again when he does, this time with something very different from fear.)

 

"That wasn't your fault, Detective," Barry says earnestly. "Don't worry. Cold will be back. And when he does... I'll be ready for him."

 

It's a pretty good speech, Barry thinks. And even if meeting with Eddie hasn't really changed anything, he feels less out of sorts than he has since all of this began, having admitted the truth to himself and examined it somewhat objectively.

 

Barry races to Eddie's side, prepared to put him back where Barry grabbed him - expecting the worst of his new... condition to prove itself no problem after all. Barry had secretly been in love with Iris for years before it got so bad that he couldn't ignore it anymore. 

 

Surely an infatuation with a guy that, until recently, Barry had only reluctantly allowed himself to _like_ \- much less fantasize about - would cause him even less trouble.

 

"Wait!" Eddie is saying, though. Stepping back just as Barry reaches for him, recovering a bit more quickly from the shock of seeing what Barry can do, apparently, with every new surprise - this time, the way Barry vibrates his face to make even the unmasked half of it unrecognizable. "What until then?" 

 

Barry honestly doesn't know what he's talking about at first.

 

"What?"

 

"What about the next time you need backup? Or that _we_ need _you_? How do we contact you? How do we know if you're in trouble?" With every question, Eddie sounds more and more certain of his need for - of his _right to_ \- the answers.

 

Barry feels a familiar twist in his chest at the idea of Eddie wanting to know when the Flash is in trouble.

 

Of course, Eddie doesn't know that Barry already has a direct line to the CCPD - and of course he would see no reason in there not being one. That must have been a part of why Eddie had campaigned so hard for his task force, after all. Beneath the fear and mistrust - and even, for a time, the hate - there had always been more. The natural inclination of a police detective to want to know (and control, as much as he can) what goes on in his city. And that side of Eddie's perspective on the Flash hasn't changed.

 

"I'll let you know, Detective."

 

"That's- That's not good enough." They're strong words, and when Barry sets a hand on Eddie's shoulder, Eddie grabs him by the bicep. But his eyes have gone wide again, and though Barry knows that he can't see it, Barry smiles.

 

"It'll have to be, Eddie."

 

Before Eddie can protest any further, Barry places him back in the parking lot. But not before he catches Eddie yelling, "What do I call _you_?"

 

Barry's already two blocks away by the time he processes what Eddie's said. He circles back around to say, "Call me what your girlfriend calls me. I'm the Flash."

 

Eddie is still standing where Barry left him. 

 

Barry tells himself he's just imaging that Eddie looks disappointed by his answer.


End file.
